Juicero, the symptom of solutions without problems

Juicero was a startup that launched an expensive, Wi-Fi-connected juicing machine that cost $400 at launch and was later reduced to $200. The idea was to be a Nespresso-like business only with proprietary juice packs that users inserted into a beautiful machine to produce fresh juice. The company wasn't fraudulent or dishonest. They genuinely offer fresh, high-quality juice with minimal hassle for health-conscious consumers.

A few weeks after launch, a Bloomberg journalist had the silly idea to just try squeezing the packs without the superbly designed machine:

A few months later, the startup that had funded the $120 million went bankrupt.

I won't even bother listing everything that went wrong with the startup team with a project that shouldn't have survived more than two hours in any startup weekend. They are just a common symptom of wishful thinking leading to falling in love with an idea because it could unlock a juicy business model (sorry). No market problem to solve? No bother. Let's overengineer a solution anyway.

Beyond this startup in itself, Juicero is an ongoing symbol of Silicon Valley’s tendency to overhype unnecessary tech, shooting from the hip and trying to make quick money. Useless juicers, metaverses, or NFTs are oftentimes just seasonal keywords used to play roulette at the tech casino. This is also what many European ecosystems want to copy when dreaming of the Silicon Valley model.

So, if for a few months, you've heard many of us, actors and participants in these ecosystems, declare that less money for startups was a good thing overall, well, this is one of the key reasons.

Solving a really difficult problem is the only way up.

Always.